IWTYAL 167: How to stop translating in your head

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Arnie asks: “How can I stop translating in my head when people speak to me in French?”

Full Transcript:

Episode Summary:
- See episode 87 for a previous answer to this topic
- Translating in your head is a very common problem
- There’s no quick fix I can give you, only some encouragement and a helpful way of thinking about the problem
- To state the obvious: When you understand what’s being said in French, you have no reason to translate
- Therefore, the more you improve, the less you translate
- This is good to remember, as it helps you realise it’s a gradual process
- For me, translating tends to be a grammar issue
- My Cantonese right now – often I’ll understand something in Cantonese, with no translation. Sometimes, I’ll come across a sentence that’s grammatically different and I’ll need to translate it in my head in order to make sense of it. This dies away over time, as I improve.

Key points:
- Spend more time listening and reading
- Grow your vocabulary
- Start using monolingual dictionaries
- Do more of your daily activities in French

Some deeper approaches to studying:
- When you learn new grammar, focus on grammar patterns, not individual verbs
- With these new grammar patterns, try to get into the head of a native speaker, and feel the way an idea is being expressed – the attitude or feeling – rather than focus on the English translation
- Work with full sentences in your study, not single words

Today’s Quote:
“You don’t learn a language, you get used to it.” – Katsumoto

Start speaking today:

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[tonytygrrHI]

This was one of the best videos on language learning I watched all morning!!! Many thanks for these tips I will incorporate as i take my Korean up to the next level!!! Thanks, Olly!

[dragonswordmountain]

"We don't learn a language, we just get used to it. We all learn languages the same way, when we get comprehensible messages we understand, this is my ✋ main, hand in French, 👩 fille." - Stephen Krashen.

[AM-fyrb]

Personally, when I started learning English as my second language it was driving me crazy because the same situation was happening to me, but when I got information about phonetics like how to read the symbols, the sounds and a couple rules, etc, everything changes, I mean, that method helped me a lot because in only 4 mounts my accent, reading skills and fluency changed completely.

[cylt]

This is pretty good advice. the need to translate will reduce as proficiency in the TL improves.. Silent reading to written material is an excellent way of learning a language. Translating is certainly about grammar and is one very good way of learning a language. I still translate French which I learned to a high level and want to continue doing this, even if I had more regular exposure to French. I want this always to be an "other" language and to speak it correctly rather than naturally. For other languages I may want a different approach and a different outcome.

[elizabethb]

oh, i'm so grateful for an a2/b1 level question & answer. i can't wait to try looking up words in the online monolingual dictionary. thanks, olly!

[ngraner]

I was getting the same impression that he stated. It is good to hear it from somebody farther along in their studies, since I was not sure.

[deveagle]

I am VERY much looking forward to your system of wordlists, audio and transcripts. Do you have material like this on your website?

[crossingsguitarluvr]

Hey Olly! Love your videos. Really helpful in my Ukrainian. Thanks!!

[patfromamboy]

When I translate in my head I have to translate the words that I know too, it’s not just the words that I don’t know. I can hear a sentence full of words that I know and I still need to translate them. Another problem is that I can’t make out the words that I hear. Everything sounds like gibberish.

[KelseyBDJ]

I would just like to mention that I've not long started studying my first second language French at the start of the year. Personally. I think it's going well. There are some great ideas here, but I would like to share my own.

I'm using flashcards at the moment, and I found they are great, but personally, only after using them for a couple of months, I want to try and stop using English as much as I can. I have already getting rid of as much English as I can for the Nouns in my deck(s). If I can find an image that I can relate with that word, the better. I've noticed only after a week, I'm starting to replace words I already know (which I used to translate into English) with images in my head. I personally think this will become easier for new words once they come along.

I'm also thinking about trying this with Verbs, might be a little more challenging. For example, has anybody spoken to you in your native language and mentioned "I went to 'this' shop on my bike yesterday.", instantly in your mind an image of them riding to that shop came to mind. This is something similar I'm trying to achieve with little English as possible. This could then be adapted to create phrases and/or sentences with images you already know, eliminating as much language that's not in your target language.

Hope this helps, it's just something I'm trying.

[qnilsgy]

I find the phrase"我明多左。“ a bit weird even though I grew up in mainland China speaking Cantonese.

[patfromamboy]

I’ve been studying Portuguese for 7.5 years now and I’ve visited Brazil 18 times but I still can’t converse or understand what people are saying. I also have to translate everything into English to understand. I practice every day with my girlfriend who only speaks Portuguese for 1-2 hours but I can’t understand what she’s saying. We’ve been doing that for over 4.5 years now. How do I learn without translating? I can’t read either without translating everything. Portuguese words don’t mean anything to me like English words do.

[suaptoest]

I think that we never stop translating . We use to translate in case we don't find the right word instinctively and become confused by that. This is only because the word we need is not in our active vocabulary. The more often we use a word the more easily that comes automaticly part of our active vocabulary.
Actually our normal thinking is not by using language. When needed we express our thoughts by language. That is we can think and understand things without knowing any linguistic experession about them. We need a language to communicate, ie to express our thoughts to each other but not always for thinking.

[awatt]

I don't get this. The only way to know what a word is is to know the definition in a tongue you understand... right?

[awatt]

I don't understand.
When I hear things in German my mind automatically translates it in English so I understand what is being said.Is this the type of translating your talking about? Or are you talking about translating with effort being bad.

When I hear bonjour immediately I thought hello.

Can someone help me understand what he is talking about?

[elzeviergarcia]

I wonder if there is actually the "think in English".
It doesn't make sense to me...in our mother tongue when we do not understand an idiomatic expression, we ask about it...then we do not get such an answer..."think in our mother tongue".
That is a very dummy way to answer to somebody who needs to learn a new idiomatic expression ever heard or just being rude.

Each Spanish spoken country got its own way to use A DIVERSIFY "COINED"(in meaning) VOCABULARY AS WELL as idiomatic expression and we do not say "think in Spanish", obviously the person asking is not acquaintan with the Spanish expression even so Spanish mother tongue be his/her native tongue.